Wish Upon a Cowboy (16 page)

"Nobody runs me out of my own house, you coot."

"So what'd she do?" Elias prompted, obviously unconvinced.

Jonas lifted his saddle and set it down on the black's back. Leaning his forearms on the worn leather, he swiveled his head to look at the man who'd raised him.

"She started talking about getting married. Having babies, for Christ's sake." He wasn't about to tell the other man about Hannah undressing and laying herself down across the bed. Some things a man just didn't talk about.

"Ah…" Elias stepped closer to the stall and leaned against the door.

A world of understanding was contained in that heavy sigh and for the first time that night, Jonas started to relax. Elias knew. He'd been a witness to that long-ago night. He knew why Jonas had closed himself off from everything that most men wanted and worked toward.

The tightness in his chest eased a bit. Then the memory of Hannah's face swam in front of him again and his insides coiled up like an overwound watch spring. Gritting his teeth, he flipped the stirrup up and across the saddle. Bending down, he grabbed the cinch strap and threaded it through the buckle.

"I never should have hired her," he said with a shake of his head. "I knew she was trouble the minute I saw her." He yanked on the strap one more time, then secured it and set the stirrup back into place. Leaning both elbows on the saddle seat, he scrubbed his face with his hands. "Damn it, I knew I'd regret it and I hired her anyway."

"You needed her."

Jonas heard the shrug in the man's voice and, turning his head to look at him, said, "I needed her like a bullet to the brain."

"She's a good cook."

"Yeah," he admitted.

"Hard worker, too," Elias went on. "That girl's goin' at a full gallop all day long."

True. Hannah did her share of work and more. The whole damn ranch had been running better since her arrival. The men worked harder because their bellies were satisfied. The ranch yard was cleaned up, laundry done, and he was even getting used to the fresh wildflowers she left all over the house.

She'd put her stamp on his house and she'd only been there a couple of weeks. God help him.

"I've got no complaint with her work. It's the rest."

"What rest?"

The haunting of his dreams. The unsettling of his soul. The unleashed snatches of the past that seemed to dog his every footstep here lately.

"So," Elias said softly, "what you don't like is her making you think about living again."

"What?" He stared into the blackness, but Elias's gray eyes were lost in the shadows.

"This talk of marriage and children," the man said quietly. "It's makin' you think. Remember."

"Hell. I don't need somebody to remind me," Jonas muttered thickly. "How the hell could I forget?"

"It was a long time ago." Elias said.

"Ten years." Years filled with regret and thoughts of what might have been.

"Maybe it's time you let it go."

"And how do I do that?" he asked, weariness tingeing his voice.

"By livin'."

A flash of anger shot through him and was gone again. "You were there, old man. You saw it. You saw her." His voice shook and he cleared his throat deliberately. "I can't just pretend it didn't happen."

"No one said you had to," Elias said.

"You just said –"

"I said it's time to leave the past in the past." Elias straightened up and shuffled his feet on the straw-littered dirt. "It's beyond time. What's done is done. There's no changin' it."

"Don't you think I know that?" Jonas nearly yelled and instantly lowered his voice again as the black sidestepped anxiously and rolled its brown eyes. "Hell, if I could change it, I'd have done it that night."

A long pause stretched out between them. Just when Jonas was hoping Elias would leave it lay, the older man spoke again.

"She would have loved this, y' know."

His fingers tightened around the lip of the saddle, fingernails digging into the worn, butter soft leather. "What?"

"You bein' miserable. You sufferin' for the rest of your life."

A stab of pain sliced at him and he wanted to argue with the man he thought of as a father. But he couldn't do it. Maybe time hadn't let him forget his failures, but it had sure enough defined the truth about the woman he'd married so long ago.

Back then, he'd been young enough to be taken in by a sweet smile and the promise of heaven on a mattress. But that heaven had become a hell on their wedding night, when his bride had ‘done her Christian duty' with a stoic forbearance that still made him shiver to think about it.

But Elias didn't know any of that. What he referred to was the crying, the complaining, the dissatisfaction that had driven Marie to make everyone's life miserable.

"It wasn't all her fault," he felt compelled to defend her, even now. She'd been his wife and he'd failed her. If he'd been a better husband, she wouldn't have been so unhappy. "She was young."

"So were you."

"It's different for a man."

Elias spat. "Jesus, boy. You think all women are like that? Take a look around you." He rubbed one hand across the top of his skull. "Most women out here are like Hannah. The kind to stand beside their men. Sharin', workin', livin', and dyin'. Just because you picked the wrong one the first time don't mean you'd do it again."

Something inside him snapped. "Why are we always talkin' about me? If you think so highly of marriage, how come you never got hitched yourself?"

"It wasn't for lack of tryin'!" Elias said just as angrily. "But I let her slip away—just like you're fixin' to do with Hannah."

Stunned, Jonas stared at him. He'd known the man all his life and never once had Elias mentioned a lost love. His whole world was spinning. Nothing was the same as it had been only a couple of weeks ago. Even the man he'd thought he knew better than anyone else had secrets. Jesus. Couldn't he count on anything? "You never said anything about a woman."

"No point in talkin'—thinkin' –" he added meaningfully "—about what's done and gone. Like I been sayin'."

But Jonas wouldn't be diverted back to talk of Marie, not before he got a few answers. "What happened? Why didn't you marry her?"

"Was a long time ago," Elias said, his voice quiet now, as shadow-filled as the barn. He sighed and added, "Nearly thirty years now. Hard to believe."

He would have been about thirty-five then, Jonas thought and tried to imagine Elias young and in love.

"Met her on a ship."

"A ship?" Jesus, what else didn't he know about the man?

Elias chuckled. "Don't sound so surprised. I was workin' for a ranch in Texas and the boss shipped a few dozen head of longhorns to England. I was one of the cowboys that went along. She was a passenger, too." His voice softened in memory and even in the dim light, Jonas saw his friend's expression gentle. "Pretty thing," he was saying. "Tall and slim, with a smile that lit up the dark spots inside me the first time I saw it."

Caught by the other man's story, Jonas silently admitted he'd felt the same way about Hannah the first time he'd laid eyes on her.

"Anyway," Elias went on, his voice rougher now he eased further away from the memories, "we fell in love."

He shook his head as if he still couldn't believe that she'd loved him. "A cowboy and a beautiful lady. Oh, I knew I wasn't good enough for her… but no other man could have loved her more."

Jonas wanted to say that no woman could have asked for a better man than Elias, but instead he said, "What went wrong?"

"We were gonna elope our first night in England since her pa was dead set against her wastin' her life on a cowboy. Figured we'd just do the deed and then her pa would have to come around." He dipped one hand into his pocket and pulled out a small gold watch that Jonas had often admired. Elias smiled down at the timepiece cradled in the palm of his hand. "She gave me this watch. Said this was one night I couldn't be late." His thumb smoothed across the intricately carved metal. "I was on time," he mused, more to himself than to Jonas. "But she didn't come. I waited most of the night. Half out of my mind with worry, wonderin' where she was… how she was. Then, around dawn, her pa showed up told me he'd already sent her home and that I should just forget about her."

"Bastard. Didn't you follow her?" Jonas asked, completely caught up in the story.

"Course I did," Elias snapped. "I ain't so quick to give up on a chance at love as you."

Jonas scowled at him, but kept quiet.

Elias tucked the watch back into his pocket, the scraped one hand across his jaw. "I was stuck in England another month, workin'. When I got home, I looked for her everywhere." He shook his head in remembered frustration. "Never did find a trace of her. It was as if she disappeared."

Jonas felt the regret in his old friend and was sorry for it. Strange how you could spend your whole life with a person and never really know all his secrets. Still he pointed out, "So after you lost her, you never tried marrying again?"

Elias glared at him, clearly understanding Jonas's meaning. "It ain't the same thing at all."

"What" s different about it?"

"I loved her. She loved me."

Jonas sucked in a gulp of air and shifted position uneasily. "I loved Marie."

"Maybe." the older man agreed. "Leastways, you tell yourself now you did. But did she love you?"

"Why the hell else would she marry me?" he demanded and fitted the bridle over the horse's head. Should have known better than to feel sympathy for the old coot. Hell, he'd probably only told Jonas that story so he could use it against him. Damn it, he didn't want to talk about this.

But he knew that wouldn't stop Elias. "Because she knew her pa would hate it," he said softly.

The simple words hit him like a solid fist.

Jonas had thought the same thing over the years wondered if Marie's easy acceptance of him had had more to do with anger at her father's remarriage than it did with her undying love for him.

"She wasn't interested in being your wife," Elias went on. "She only wanted to make her pa miserable and she used you to do it."

True, his mind screamed, but Jonas ignored the voice inside. If that had been Marie's plan, Lord knew she'd paid for it in the end. Shaking his head slowly, he gathered the reins in one hand and turned to face Elias again.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "Whatever Marie was, he was my wife and I failed her. Me. I wasn't there when she needed me most." His teeth ground together. "And that's why I won't marry again."

Elias grunted, disgusted. "So you're just gonna let Hannah walk out of your life?"

Jonas swallowed heavily. "She's not in my life."

"If you really believe that, you're a damn fool, boy."

"That's been said before," Jonas told him and swung onto the horse, gathering the reins up in his left hand. Giving the horse a nudge with his heels, Jonas left the barn and headed for the herd, hoping for a little peace.

*  *  *

Creekford

Eudora gripped the handle of her carpetbag and stepped into the night. Closing her front door behind her, she turned and looked into the darkness surrounding her little house.

Mooncast shadows danced and writhed along the grass bordering the road that led to town. Tree limbs waving in the wind outlined themselves against the star studded sky, looking like black, thorny arms reaching for her. Their leaves rustled like dry paper and the soft patter of a nearby creek had the sound of low-pitched voices whispering.

She inhaled sharply and tried to ignore the flutter of nerves swirling in the pit of her stomach. But between worry over Hannah and Wolcott and the Mackenzie, and now a train trip to a place she'd never been before, well, it was hopeless. It was her own fault. She should have left Creekford more. Seen some of the world. Instead, she'd lived her entire life within the safe boundaries of a town full of witches. Well, but for that one trip to Europe.

Still it wasn't really the traveling that worried her.

It was her destination… and what she might find.

Eudora stared into the darkness and wondered as she had so many times over the years. Old regrets shimmered through her and she wished, not for the first time, that she'd been able to use the crystal on her own. But seeing into her own future was impossible, and looking into her past, futile.

She sniffed, tightened her grip on the carpetbag, and resolved to keep her mind on the matters at hand. From the corner of her eye, she glanced at the ivy-covered fence to her left. Someone was there. She felt his presence as surely as she could feel her own heartbeat.

Her fingers squeezed the worn leather strap in her hand. Blake Wolcott's man was still watching her, then. Good. A small, tight smile curved her lips briefly as she took the porch steps and moved onto the road. She walked quickly, her long, even strides carrying her toward the tiny train station outside town.

She walked surely, following the silvery path of moonlight. Let her watcher stumble and crash his way blindly through the darkened woods. Let him chase after her as she led him in circles around the country. The longer Wolcott and his minion were concerned with her, the more time Hannah would have to do what she must.

*  *  *

One Week Later

Hannah still felt the sting of rejection.

Oh, she'd gone about her business, cleaning, cooking, talking with the men as they streamed in and out of her kitchen looking for coffee or cookies. She'd already planned what she would cook for the first day of the roundup, due to start in less than a week. And every night, she attempted new spells, designed to weaken Jonas's ability to resist her.

Unfortunately, none of them seemed to be working.

A sudden hot wash of tears swam in her eyes and she blinked them back furiously. She would not give in to tears, despite the temptation.

She'd offered herself to him. Stood before him naked, for heaven's sake. He'd kissed her and made her feel all sorts of things she'd never imagined. He'd touched her and shared the strength of his power. Her hands gripped the edge of the kitchen table and squeezed tightly as a rush of embarrassed heat swamped her. If he could kiss her and walk away from her in that situation, what chance of success did her latest plan have?